Editor’s note: To close out Women’s History Month we are running this series of guest posts from Emily May and Samuel Carter, co-founders of Hollaback, as they reflect on taking an idea and moving it to action, the best practices they have learned along the way and documenting for us that feminist history is happening right now.

One of the magic aspects of Hollaback! is that for the first five years, we needed almost no money. The blog was free and we paid about $10 a year for the domain name. Every year or so we’d raise maybe $100 or $200, and we’d have enough to silkscreen Hollaback! tshirts, press buttons, or print stickers.

The founders of Hollaback! knew a thing or two about running organizations and we knew instinctively that organization-ing Hollaback! just wasn’t the right trajectory. Fundraising, payroll taxes, insurance—these are all code words for revolution resistant. We knew that we, the people running Hollaback!, were our most valuable resource. The best stimulus package we could give our little project was to stay in the streets and out of red tape.

Those blissful days came to end when our little project got too big to be run by a volunteer collective anymore. We’d taken out a $5,000 loan to build our first iPhone app because we were so convinced that foundations would jump at the opportunity. They didn’t. In addition to our loan, we had another $10,000 in bills mounting just to complete the app.

It was a moment of desperation. Not knowing what else to do we put the project on Kickstarter (at that point a brand new platform for funding) for $12,500. If we didn’t raise all of the money we didn’t get any of it. At that point, we had no board, no individual donors to date, no email list, no facebook group, no twitter followers, and we didn’t know a soul who could donate over $100.

But it worked. In only one month we exceeded our goal and raised $13,500. About 75% of the donations were $10 or less, and it was truly a community effort. Everyone who knew anyone was sending emails to their friends and slamming their social media pages to bring Hollaback! to life.

The power of the campaign caught the attention of the Ms. Foundation for Women, and a few months later they gave us our first grant. When Emily got the call it was late on a Friday. The woman on the other end of the line said “we’re awarding you a grant for fifteen dollars.” “Fifteen dollars?” Emily asked, trying to sound grateful. After all, that was fifteen more dollars than we had last week. “Fifteen dollars,” the caller repeated, paused, and then quickly said “no, no I mean $15,000!”

This was really going to happen. But we’ve had to keep fighting tooth and nail for every moment of it. We quickly discovered there are two worlds of foundations that would consider donating to something like Hollaback!, and neither of them knew what to do with us. No one had a “street harassment” portfolio, but foundations that focus on women’s, LGBTQ issues, or gender-based violence kind of got it for the most part. Street harassment wasn’t new to them, in fact, the first anti-harassment group called the “Anti-Flirt Club” had popped up as early as the 1920s. But our model of online organizing was completely new, and we got rejected left and right.

On the other side of the coin, there was a new field of funding for social innovation and entrepreneurship. They loved our model, but in off-line conversations with two of their staff people we were told that although they, personally, loved what we are doing—they feared that street harassment just wasn’t as pressing of an issue as world hunger or global health. In the written feedback form from one fellowship application were the words, “street harassment is not a problem in the United States.”

There is no need to sugar coat it. We started a nonprofit in a recession working on an issue that was “new” to many funders using a model that was “new” to almost all of them. It seemed that where foundations (except for an awesome few) failed us, individuals totally “got it.” We reworked our fundraising strategy to focus on the individuals. After all, there are a lot more individuals in the world than foundations—and it’s individuals—not foundations who get street harassed everyday, and are willing to blog, tweet, and Facebook themselves into changing the world.

Katie Hnida is an athlete, advocate, and all-around bad-ass, who was the first woman to score in an NCAA Division I football game.

She has been playing top-tier football for twenty years and has used her platform to speak out about the importance of improving sexism within sport culture. As a sexual assault survivor, Katie has a unique perspective on how to support women on campus and on and off the field.

We were so thrilled to speak with her about her experience for this week’s Feministing Five!

Suzanna Bobadilla: You have been playing football since you were in middle school and you were the first woman to score in an NCAA Division I game. You have touched various aspects ...

Katie Hnida is an athlete, advocate, and all-around bad-ass, who was the first woman to score in an NCAA Division I football game.

After 4-and-a-half years of legal battle for firing a warning shot into a wall in self-defense against her abusive husband, Marissa Alexander is expected to be released from jail today, though she’ll likely remain under house arrest for two more years — which, as Maya Schenwar notes, means “she won’t be free.”

Activists from FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture and the Free Marissa Now campaign have teamed up to ensure that when Alexander arrives for her sentencing hearing at the Duval County Courthouse in Jacksonville, she’ll be greeted by messages of solidarity from other domestic violence survivors across the country.

“350 quilt squares containing stories from survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault will blanket the Duval County ...

After 4-and-a-half years of legal battle for firing a warning shot into a wall in self-defense against her abusive husband, Marissa Alexander is expected to be released from jail today, though she’ll likely remain under house ...

At the Screen Actors Guild Awards last year, Viola Davis won the title of outstanding lead actress in a dramaand gave this great speech on diversity and representation in Hollywood, thanking the creators of How to Get Away With Murder for believing that a “sexualized, messy, mysterious woman could be a 49-year-old, dark-skinned, African-American woman who looks like me.”

This year also marked the first time in the SAG awards history that both lead actress titles went to black women, as Uzo Aduba won for outstanding lead actress in a comedy for her role in Orange Is the New Black. Still, there’s always more progress to be made. As Davis said on the red carpet, “We’re in the 21st century now. People ...

At the Screen Actors Guild Awards last year, Viola Davis won the title of outstanding lead actress in a dramaand gave this great speech on diversity and representation in Hollywood, thanking the creators of How to Get ...